So I've been promising you a Lamont meeting recap, and here it is.
In all honesty, I did not expect to support Ned Lamont. When I wrote The Risks for the Blogosphere of Taking on Lieberman, I outlined the set of risks that we carry in going against someone who is well-entrenched and popular in their state. And I was expecting to go to Connecticut and find a guy eager to beat Joe Lieberman, but without a sense of what he wanted to do in the Senate and why he was in politics. All too often, that's what neophytes in the political process bring to the table, enthusiasm and energy without discipline. I know how bad Lieberman is. It's not just the war vote, it's how he introduced the Iraq war resolution and undercut all the other Democratic Senators who wanted to authorize force with more restrictions. It's not just the consistent Bush-kissing, it's how he grandstands against Alito and the Bankruptcy Bill and then votes for cloture, the only real vote that matters. It is, in short, how Lieberman has no principle, no vision, and no ability to lead this country in the right direction. He's with us when it doesn't matter, and he's against us when it does. Nevertheless, politics is about reality, longevity, and consistency, not just idealism, and I was scared that we'd throw a sacrificial lamb at a DLC giant.
After my time in Connecticut, I am 100% behind Ned Lamont. He is a serious, disciplined man who has the right temperament and a deep understanding of what it means to succeed and achieve in this world (he is also good-looking and photogenic). The downsides of his candidacy are clear. He has held only one elected office as a local politician, and he is starting his run with only seven months until the primary in August. He is down in the polls by 47-36, and his name ID is low. This is going to be a tough race. Lieberman is a ruthless campaigner with oodles of money and the support of DC insiders; indeed, the entire edifice of the 'sensible Democrat' is built on Lieberman's mixture of pandering-as-principle, and these people will fight viciously to maintain their veneer of respectability. Going into Connecticut means going into the belly of the beast.
Given all these factors, why am I behind Ned Lamont? Or rather, why did I shift from a lukewarm overly anxious state to what sounds like, but isn't, that of a Kool-Aid Kid? Well I have a test for politicians. I ask them who their political idols are, and why. And what Ned Lamont told me is the single most impressive answer I have ever gotten. His favorite politicians are Bill Clinton and Bill Bradley, and the reason is because he believes we need a more entrepreneurial style of politics. That is a remarkable answer. It is remarkable because it is absolutely forward-looking and systematic. What we face as a country is systemic corruption, not a few bad apples. And the way to shift that system is through a new crop of entrepreneurial leaders who seek to occupy and create new political space, not to swell on the legacy of the New Dealers. Ned Lamont is one of these leaders.
Why else do I find him impressive? Well, because he's accomplished. He built a company. That may not sound hard, but it is. Building a telecommunications company takes guts, bravado, perseverance, and savvy. It means calculated risk-taking, not blind recklessness or excessive caution. Yet even as he was building his business, he worked on policy with the Brookings Institute, fiscal policy and health care. Lamont is extremely progressive, for very solid pragmatic and moral reasons. Without a functional and universal health care system, businesses and workers are getting crushed. Being in Iraq is a diversion of resources away from critical domestic priorities, and away from catching Bin Laden. These are not poll-tested answers from a guy seeking to beat Lieberman; these are the instinctive positions of someone who has thought and done his civic duty for years as a business and community leader. That matters because it means he brings a level of seriousness to any endeavor he undertakes. He keeps his word, and he gets things done and built. And his business background and reputation in the state makes it very difficult to pigeonhole him as some unrealistic liberal.
The other reason I'm behind Ned Lamont is because he's done his politics the right way, and this means he can win. His campaign staff is superb. Tom Swan, his campaign manager, knows politics, and while I can't go into the specifics of the strategy, it is realistic and makes a great deal of sense given the landscape of Connecticut and the relatively small universe of primary voters. For instance, there were 125,000 in the uncontested Presidential primary in 2004 and with a volunteer list above 1000, that means that almost 2% of the total necessary primary vote is volunteering for Lamont. I would imagine my voter universe numbers are somewhat off, but not by orders of magnitude. Lamont is going to need money and has set an informal fundraising goal of $500,000 by the end of the month; McCain-Feingold means that he can't use more than $500,000 of his own money without triggering provisions that allow Lieberman to double his take from his maxed out donors. But Lamont will also spend this money efficiently; there are endless ways to waste money in a primary campaign, and Lamont, because he comes from private industry and is using people who have been around the block to run his campaign. Oh, and while we're talking about numbers, Moveon.org has 50,000 members in Connecticut. That's low-hanging fruit for Lamont.
As Atrios, Kos, Chris Bowers, Scott, and others have noted, this is a change election. Massive swings are taking place towards outsider progressive candidates, 31 points for Deval Patrick in MA and 24 points for Matt Brown in RI. These are specifically Northeastern states, with very similar dynamics in terms of ossified political machinery. This applies to CT; the insiders have forgotten how to do grassroots campaigning. And Lieberman, by undermining unions, women's rights, trial lawyers, and progressives, simply has no base anymore except entrenched insiders. Those who support Lieberman are too often Republicans or Independents who cannot vote in the primary. Even such party stalwarts such as Mark Schmitt are calling for a challenge to Lieberman.
The meeting itself was great. There were a bunch of local bloggers, and we were able to talk about a whole set of issues, including Iraq, corruption, the Democratic Party, health care, business, and the mechanics of campaigning. PoliticsTV came to the meeting and filmed, so there will be footage you can watch. All in all, we have a principled businessman and political entrepreneur candidate running for office against an entrenched incumbent. Lamont has the temperament, strategy, and ability to beat Lieberman. I think he will.
And I'm going to make my donation, proudly, not just against Joe Lieberman but for Ned Lamont. I'm going to give $500, which is a lot of money for me. But I want to have skin in this game, I want to be part of this victory, and I want to be able to say that I was there when Ned Lamont first decided to beat Joe Lieberman and put America back on the road to a bright progressive future.
NOTES AND REACTIONS
- We've got a DONOR MATCH from DownwithTyranny! Give! Give enough within the next 24 hours to his Actblue page for Ned Lamont and he'll max out! Also his pic of Lamont is worth a click over to his site.
- Lamont can apparently spend more personal money than I had heard.
- VirginiaBlogger has this to say:
I think it's a bad idea to put everything everyone has worked so hard for on the line for this race. If this happens, and Lieberman win's we will just be cementing the perception that we in the blog community aren't a base.
Look, I've done my homework. I assessed the risks. I've met with the DSCC. I've met with insider politicians. I've met with Lamont. I looked at the polls. I did my analysis of similar races. At some point you've got to commit and put 110% of effort beating the pandering politician who stabs you in the face. In other words, if we never fight, we never win, and the risk/reward on this is OUTSTANDING!
- Illustrious, a Brit, shows that each of us can matter.
During the last British General Election I worked as hard as I could for my local party. Sure, we lost the Parliamentary election, but we made good ground in the local council elections. I also worked in a local constituency (Sandrah Gidley in Romsey) for one day - election day. That day I must have contacted, through the telephone and through knocking on doors, about 300 people. We won by 125 votes.If you want to make big changes happen, it doesn't take a lot of effort. Movements are what change the world. I really urge all of you who feel the same outrage I do about issues like Iraq to go sign up as an activist for the local Democrats. Then when you win, you can feel like you achieved something. When I heard Sandrah had won, I was ecstatic.
This is especially true in a small voter universe primary.
- CTKeith of DumpJoe says the results of the poll aren't surprising; the netroots is as usual more in touch with the local party activists than the DC conventional wisdumb.
- Metadata says being an outsider can be helpful. I agree, since outsiders are more likely to take advantage of newer tactics that at this point have some history behind them.
- A Deval Patrick supporter chimes in! Go Deval!
- Here's an interview with Lamont. Nice pic!
- There's a Ned Lamont resource page.
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